


Time is Running Out

by cliniclyInsane189



Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliniclyInsane189/pseuds/cliniclyInsane189
Summary: C1: An unfortunate mage ends up in a bit of a tight spot. Her bard friend and a new acquaintance have to come to the rescue. (Whumptober Day 4)-C2: The aftermath of a building collapsing on you is not pretty. Luckily for Rosalea, she has people to help her out. (Whumptober Day 7)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947934
Kudos: 1
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. (I Won't Let You) Bury It

**Author's Note:**

> I have dunked myself into the world of The Witcher and emerged with OCs!  
> Chapter One written for Whumptober 2020 Day 4 - ‘Running out of time’ - Caged | Buried Alive | **Collapsed Building**  
>  Chapter Two will be uploaded on the 7th for Day 7!

Everything hurt.

Rosalea hadn’t woken in this much pain for years, and yet... 

Here she was.

She lay there on the cold stone, body heavy, eyes shut, mind drifting as she tried to remember what she’d been doing before she fell asleep.

She took in a deep breath, then immediately choked on a cloud of dust.

Her heart jolted and her eyes snapped open. 

Nothing.

It was completely dark. The air was heavy and thick with dust and the smell of blood and filth, and it was eerily quiet.

Her eyes stung as dust and grit landed in them, so she closed them. Nothing to see, no need for them.

Carefully, she lifted her right arm. She got it a few inches, then it hit something solid.

Rubble.

Of  _ course _ , she remembered now. The fight, being outnumbered, a last desperate, wild outpouring of chaos… She couldn’t have won, not immediately after dealing with a monster infestation, but she couldn’t have afforded for her opponents to walk away either - so she’d decided that the best option was to simply bring down the building on top of all of them.

And now  _ this. _

At least she didn’t seem to be trapped with any corpses - that would have been very unpleasant and potentially dangerous.

She moved her hand towards her head, felt around. The rubble was about an inch from her face.

She moved her other arm.

Or rather, she tried to.

Even a twitch sent pain rocketing down her spine; tracing liquid fire down to her fingertips from her shoulder.

Ah. That was a problem, she thought, eyes watering from the sudden, unexpected pain.

She felt around blindly with her free hand and found the culprit - a large, twisted piece of wood had jammed itself straight through her shoulder. 

_ Fuck. _

She ran her hand up the wood, careful to avoid jostling it or getting a handful of splinters, and found it lodged firmly into the rubble above her. She let her hand fall to her chest, grimacing as the movement jostled her injured shoulder.

The wood was wide, but not so wide that she couldn’t get a good grip on it. She could probably break it, if necessary.

On the other hand, knowing her luck, that piece of wood was probably the only thing that had stopped her from getting  _ very _ up close and personal with the rubble right above her head.

She sighed quietly and tried shifting her legs.

The right could move freely from side to side, to an extent, though only about an inch up. The left couldn’t move at all. In fact, it was starting to go numb, which was a bad sign. She could twitch her toes, though, which, at the very least, told her that her leg was still attached.

Small mercies.

She fell still, focusing as much as she could on her breathing.

She was pretty sure she’d told Briar where she was planning on heading and when she should have been back. So, she could probably expect someone to come looking for her eventually. She’d just have to hope that ‘eventually’ wouldn’t be too late.

She licked her lips, grimacing at the thick coating of gritty dust the motion brought into her rapidly drying mouth.

She sighed, then coughed, the sudden jerking motion sending bright bursts across closed eyes.

Breathing devolving into wheezing, her hand clenched around the ridiculously large splinter.

Her thoughts began to slow and she began to trickle into unconsciousness, the gradual slide bringing with it an odd mixture of relief and dulled panic.

* * *

Rosalea woke again some unknown amount of time later, her head pounding and her shoulder throbbing, to the sound of a wonderfully familiar voice shouting.

Oh, good. Briar had found her.

She tried to call out but choked on dust.

She tried again - this, too, failed.

She took as deep a breath as she could and dug her hand through the cracked flooring beneath her and into the dirt below.

She dragged in energy and, at the same time, spilt it out into a blindingly bright light that burned around her other hand. She twisted it to her fingertip and sent it out in a bolt a short distance away from where the voice had come from.

Judging from the startled yelling, her attempt to get Briar’s attention had succeeded.

She gave a weak grin, then sighed and slumped into the ground, her vision fading again.

* * *

The next thing she was aware of was a blessedly fresh breeze suddenly drifting into the space that she was confined in and a familiar face hovering just above her.

“Lea!” She gasped. “What happened?”

“Later,” Rosalea managed. “You got help?”

“Yes!” Briar shifted to the side, allowing another figure to join her. “This is Felicyta, she’s a Witcher! I found her in the inn this morning.”

“Great,” Lea muttered. “How long…?”

“You left in the evening day before yesterday,” Briar said.

“Shit,” Lea said, blinking slowly. “Well, let’s get on with this.”

“Hm,” Felicyta said. “That piece of the support beam is penetrating straight through your shoulder. We _will_ need more time to clear this.”

Lea shook her head slowly.

“I got that. Just get ready to pull.”

She closed her eyes, dug the fingers of both hands into the ground and began to pull.

The sudden rush of Chaos sent her hair standing on end, but she kept dragging it in and building it up before letting it flow gradually out. The rubble piled directly on and above her lifted and Felicyta, quick on the uptake, grabbed hold of the wood and yanked.

Lea’s vision went white and a strangled scream escaped her. For a second her control slipped and the floating rubble began to dip, but she had it back in an iron grasp almost immediately. 

She pulled in a wheezing, gasping breath and opened her eyes again to see Felicyta pushing Briar back and offering a hand down to Lea. 

And with her good arm, she took it.


	2. How did it come to this?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of a building collapsing on you is not pretty. Luckily for Rosalea, she has people to help her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Whumptober 2020 Day 7 - **‘I’ve got you’ - Support** | Carrying | Enemy to Caretaker  
> This is an pretty much immediate follow-up to the previous chapter.  
> Chapter Warnings: nausea, vague descriptions of injuries.

Lea made it approximately two steps away from the wreckage before collapsing, legs turning to water and vision to fog.

A hand caught her arm, then very rapidly after a pair caught the other. The jostling sent a spike of pain through her and would have sent her to her knees had she not been held upright.

Through the rushing in her ears, she heard a familiar voice calling out.

“Lea? Lea!” Briar called, her face swimming into view in front of Lea.

Lea managed a groan.

“It’s okay, Lea, we’ve got you,” Briar said. “I’ve got you.”

Lea blinked slowly.

“...’kay,” she muttered, eventually, swaying heavily.

Her legs were back in that unpleasant state where they felt like thousands of tiny needles were poking around in them, while at the same time being almost completely unresponsive.

Her head was spinning - she was so disoriented that she could barely tell which way was up. She leaned more heavily on the person to her right - Felicyta, she remembered - and closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into what was the Witcher’s shoulder. It smelled like leather and blood, but that was at least better than the heavy, thick,  _ choking _ air beneath the rubble.

“I think I overdid it,” she admitted, voice sounding too far away, once her head had cleared somewhat. “Too much Chaos, too little time.”

“No kidding,” Briar said, sounding distinctly relieved, as she helped Lea stand fully upright again. “What the hell happened, Lea?”

Lea shook her head, then groaned as the motion brought nausea welling up in her gut.

“Later,” she grunted, focussing on her breathing. “Not here.”

“You two have a room in the inn?” Felicyta asked.

“Yeah,” Briar said. “For the rest of the week - maybe more, once we get paid for, uh…”

She broke off, presumably staring at the wreckage.

Lea sighed.

“I already got the teeth,” she said. “Wasn’t the monsters that gave me trouble.”

“Hm,” Felicyta said. It was half acknowledgement and half question. “We need to get you back to the inn, then. Your bard promised me a cut of the pay from your job for helping you out.”

Lea let out an involuntary laugh, then groaned.

“Well, we don’t want you to not get paid,” she said, jokingly. “But I’m not going to be able to walk that far.”

Her dizziness finally having abated, she opened her eyes again and looked around, taking in the scene of destruction before them.

“We brought my horse,” Felicyta said, nodding towards the trees. “You can ride that.” She frowned, golden eyes narrowing. “Presuming you can ride in your present state.”

“I’ll manage,” Lea said, and the group started slowly towards the edge of the clearing. “Though, maybe,” she added, as they got closer, “just give me a minute first.”

She stumbled, caught herself on Felicyta’s shoulder, then sank down to sit on a fallen tree-trunk. 

Shit, she was  _ tired _ .

So damn tired she could barely keep her eyes open. She hadn’t felt this bad in years, and right now she didn’t even have her usual reserves of Chaos to keep her going, having spilled it all out into the violent, uncontrolled blast that had levelled the building that had once stood strong in the centre of the clearing.

Perfectly in the centre of the clearing.

“Oh,” she said, faintly. “That’s why I’m so tired.”

“What?” Felicyta asked.

“There wasn’t a clearing,” Lea said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh?” Said Briar. Then, almost immediately; “oh!”

“ _ What? _ ” Felicyta repeated.

“Look at how all the trees have fallen,” Briar said, gesturing around them. “And the building right in the very centre. Whatever it was Lea did to bring down the building, it had quite the wide area of effect.”

Lea tuned them out, slumping sideways into Briar as exhaustion overtook her.

It was okay, she had some time to rest.

Briar had her.

She was okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed that!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope everyone enjoyed! The Witcher is my newest fandom, so I'm still getting to grips with the lore and such, so I hope this didn't have anything glaringly out of place.


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